Buddhist Householder Clergy (Ordination in Nichiren Shu)

The following is a piece I wrote in preparation for a presentation I gave as part of a panel at the Won Institute of Graduate Studies 2010 Forum whose topic was “Roles and Practices in Ordained Buddhist Orders in America.” This was held on March 28, 2010. The question put before the panel was this:

What policies and procedures do Asian Buddhist orders in the US have regarding their clergy in the areas of training, ordination criteria, assigned roles after ordination, compensation and financial status, and marital status? Won Buddhism wants to learn from other Buddhist orders’ experience and to share those lessons with the various Buddhist schools in the US in order to create a collaborative effort to help Buddhism become firmly rooted in America.

By the way, for those who feel this article or series of articles by me is “academic” please think again. I am not an academic and this is more of a long rambling essay based on my personal experiences but with an eye to historical developments as I have been able to glean them from actual academics. This is more of a record of my personal inquiry regarding what it means to be a “Buddhist priest” or “minister” when the Buddha never established a priesthood but rather an association of itinerant mendicants. Nichiren himself was an itinerant mendicant. And yet, those of us ordained in Japanese lineages (including Zen, Jodo, Tendai, etc…) are not itinerant mendicants, not monastics (well most of us are not), and yet not just lay people either.

Ordination in Nichiren Shu

In the Spring of 2001, after a four year apprenticeship at the San Jose Nichiren Buddhist Temple, I completed 40 days of monastic training at Kuon-ji Temple at Mt. Minobu and was then, along with two other Americans, fully ordained as a Nichiren Shu minister (J. kyoshi lit. sutra master). Not too long after that I received the following question on a private email list I was on at that time:

I would also like to congratulate Michael. However, I am not sure what it means to be ordained as a minister in Nichiren Shu. Could someone explain the requirements for ordination, as well as the duties and obligations of a Nichiren Shu priest? Thank you

My response encompassed not only the process by which I became a minister in Nichiren Shu, but also my thoughts about the duties, roles, and obligations of a minister as far as I understood them at the time based on what I had been taught and my experiences. Since this conference is for the purpose of discussing the training and role of Buddhist clergy in North America, I would like to share an updated version of that response. Perhaps these reflections of a North American Buddhist minister ordained in a Japanese lineage of Buddhism but still married and holding a full-time job as a file clerk will be helpful. After that I would like to review how it came to be that the order of itinerant mendicants established by the historical Buddha turned into the married clergy of modern Japanese Buddhism that I now find myself a part of. Furthermore, I want to explore the possible roles of a married Buddhist clergy in the modern world (not just in Japan) and whether such roles can in any way be claimed as authentically Buddhist.

In response to the question asked, the first step to becoming a part of the Nichiren Shu clergy (J. soryo) is to undergo the ceremony called shukke tokudo (lit. to “leave home and attain the way”). In my case, I underwent the tokudo ceremony in October of 1997, my master was (and is for that matter) the Ven. Ryusho Matsuda, who at the time was the head minister of the San Jose Nichiren Buddhist temple and the elected bishop of the Nichiren Order of North America (the association of Nichiren Shu temples in the continental USA and Canada). After tokudo one is considered to be a novice (J. shami; Skt. shramanera). As a novice, one is basically an apprentice minister under one’s master. In the Nichiren Shu tradition, to take this initial step, one must first find a fully ordained minister who is willing to take one on as a disciple and who can vouch for the strength and sincerity of one’s practice of the Buddha Dharma. That can be quite a long process in and of itself, but one that is very personal and has to do with (hopefully) a growing relationship of mutual trust and understanding between the potential apprentice and potential master. To be initiated means that one will undertake the following:

• To seek enlightenment. While all those who chant the Odaimoku (lit. sacred title) of the Lotus Sutra are “aspiring to awakening” (J. bodaishin; Skt. bodhicitta), the one who becomes a minister has the specific intention to make this the central driving intention of one’s life and to take responsibility to help encourage the aspiration for awakening in others. It is basically a deepening of the fundamental aspiration of all Nichiren Buddhists.

• To make efforts to cut off the ties of relatives. In other countries, those who become Buddhist clergy will literally cut off all family ties. Japanese Buddhism, however, has been more concerned with inner intent than with taking up the lifestyle of Indian mendicants. It is not expected that one should literally cut off one’s family ties. Rather, one should realize that seeking awakening is a higher priority than the ambitions and expectations that are commonly a part of a householder’s life. This does not mean, however, that one can renege on one’s family responsibilities in the name of Buddhism. What it does mean is that the fulfillment of family responsibilities must be viewed and lived within the context of the bodhisattva ideal to save all sentient beings.

• To train himself (or herself) by the monastic rules. Again, Japanese Buddhism has never concerned itself with trying to duplicate the life of 5th century B.C.E. Indian mendicants. However, one should try to abide by the spirit of the vinaya (the monastic precepts) by living with integrity, courtesy, and mindfulness. As Nichiren Buddhists, we must simply ask ourselves if a given course of action, speech or intention is in accord with Namu Myoho Renge Kyo (lit. Devotion to the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra).

• To wear the robe of the Dharma. This is a reference to Chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra entitled “The Teacher of the Dharma” wherein it is written:

If you wish to expound this sutra,

Enter the abode of the Tathagata,

Wear the robe of the Tathagata,

Sit on the throne of the Tathagata,

[And after doing these things,]

Expound it to people without fear!

To enter the abode of the Tathagata means to have great compassion.

To wear his robe means to be gentle and patient.

To sit on his throne means to see the emptiness of all things.

Expound the Dharma only after you do these [three] things!

(Murano 1974, pp. 178-179)

• To take the Three Refuges. In Nichiren Shu Buddhism we take refuge in the Original Shakyamuni Buddha revealed in the “Duration of the Life of the Tathagata” chapter of the Lotus Sutra, the Odaimoku of the Lotus Sutra which is Namu Myoho Renge Kyo as the supreme Dharma, and the Sangha of the Bodhisattvas from Underground led by Bodhisattva Superior Practice who appeared in the “Appearance of Bodhisattvas from Underground” chapter of the Lotus Sutra and were given the commission to uphold the Wonderful Dharma in this age after the Buddha’s parinirvana in the “Supernatural Powers of the Tathagata” chapter of the Lotus Sutra.

• To master the threefold discipline of morality, concentration, and wisdom. In Nichiren Buddhism this means that we live a morally wholesome life by upholding the spirit of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in all our thoughts, words and deeds in all situations; that we meditate upon the Gohonzon (lit. focus of devotion; in this case it refers to the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra and/or the Original Shakyamuni Buddha who confers it upon us) at all times so that we can draw upon the tranquility and insight of our own buddha nature; and finally to realize for ourselves the wisdom of the Buddha expressed by Namu Myoho Renge Kyo.

• To depart from the secular life. Again, this does not mean that we turn our backs on the secular world, but it does mean that we should be “in it but not of it.” In other words, we strive to see the vanity inherent in secular ambitions and distractions and strive instead to wholeheartedly see and live the Buddha Dharma in every situation that we are in.

• To have faith in the Buddha. This is the same as having faith in Namu Myoho Renge Kyo for that is the truth of the Buddha’s life and teachings. To have faith in this sense is to realize that we can entrust ourselves to Namu Myoho Renge Kyo and not to seek true happiness anywhere other than in the Stupa of Treasures which resides within the depths of our own lives.

• To observe the precepts. Again, this refers not to the letter but the intention of the vinaya that is crystallized in the Diamond Chalice Precept of wholeheartedly upholding Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in all circumstances.

• To protect the Dharma by upholding the true teaching and correcting any misrepresentations (slander) of the Buddha Dharma. Protecting the Dharma also means striving to strengthen and maintain the Sangha and to share the teachings with others.

In the tokudo ceremony, one is making the commitment to endeavor in all of these things. In addition, one is making the commitment to cooperate with one’s teacher in transmitting the Lotus Sutra to posterity, generation after generation.

After tokudo, the new novice is sent to the docho registration ceremony at Kiyosumidera (aka Seicho-ji where Nichiren was ordained and studied Buddhism as a child) at the earliest opportunity. Docho refers to the ordination certificate that one receives at that time. Until a novice has gone to the docho registration ceremony he or she is not officially recognized by Nichiren Shu.

For the next few years the novice is expected to study, practice, and develop his/her faith under the guidance of the teacher. This includes learning to chant the sutra and learning how to conduct the various services. In the case of myself and the two other novices that I trained with, we were all brought together once a year for an annual Shami Seminar that would take place over a three or four day weekend at one of the Nichiren Shu temples in North America. During those seminars we learned more about service manners, were trained in the chanting of the sutra and the singing of liturgical hymns (J. shomyo) and also given classes on the Lotus Sutra, the life of Nichiren Shonin, Buddhist doctrine, and the history of Nichiren Buddhism.

When the master feels that the disciple is ready, the novice will be sent to the 35 day Shingyo Dojo training program at Mount Minobu, where one will complete one’s training and receive the higher ordination as a full-fledged minister. Shingyo literally means “Faith and Practice.” Before being admitted to Shingyo Dojo one must be tested in one’s ability to chant the sutra and also in one’s knowledge of rudimentary Buddhist doctrine. In the case of the other two American novices and myself, we were tested in our ability to chant the sutra by the bishop of the Nichiren Order of North America at the San Jose Nichiren Buddhist Temple in the summer of 2000, but our doctrinal test was given at Minobu College at Mt. Minobu in the fall of 2000. It was felt that we should take the test with the other Japanese novices who were applying to Shingyo Dojo, though our test was translated into English for us. We passed both tests, but it was felt that we should have some additional time to acclimate ourselves to the monastic training and to learn the colloquial Japanese way of reciting the Lotus Sutra, so we were sent to join the five day remedial chanting class that is held on the five days immediately prior to the beginning of Shingyo Dojo.

The forty days at Shingyo Dojo were truly grueling but also rewarding. 67 Japanese novices were there as well as the other two American novices and myself. Since we American novices could not speak fluent Japanese, we were provided with translators who would sit behind us and provide the gist of the lectures that were given and/or help us to follow instructions. Fortunately, our training with our masters at our home temples in America and at the annual Shami Seminars was very thorough. In some ways we were better prepared than many of the Japanese novices, for all three of us already knew how to conduct services, fold our robes, and sing liturgical hymns. Much of the time, we could just follow what everyone else was doing, and for services we had all the sutras and liturgy transliterated so that we could follow along. I’d like to note that this made it easier for us than for the Japanese novices. The Japanese novices had to look at the Chinese Lotus Sutra and by memory recite the sutra in colloquial Japanese at times, which involves rearranging the characters and filling in Japanese particles because Japanese grammar is very different than Kumarajiva’s Chinese translation of the Lotus Sutra. All we had to do was switch from our transliterated Sino-Japanese reading to our transliterated Japanese reading.

The greatest hardship for us was sitting in the posture known as seiza, the formal Japanese way of sitting with one’s legs directly underneath the body. We did not use benches or cushions, and sometimes there were no mats and we had to sit directly on the hardwood floor of the training hall. We had to sit this way during all services and lectures. I did observe, however, that there were a few Japanese novices who were having as much or more difficulty with this than we Americans. I’d like to note that sitting in this way was not simply to make us uncomfortable (though sometimes that was the aim such as when we had to do extra chanting as punishment for our shortcomings). The average Japanese minister must be able to sit in this formal posture without moving or squirming when doing funerals and memorial services for the members of their temple, and in some temples there may be as many as a half dozen or more such services conducted a day. So it is important to be able to endure sitting in seiza for long periods of time if one is a Japanese minister. Those who persisted in squirming or sitting incorrectly (such as myself at times I must admit) would be yelled at or even kicked until we sat correctly without moving.

Life at Shingyo Dojo was truly a monastic life. We were not permitted to retain any money or personal belongings, we wore clerical robes or work clothes at all times, we kept our heads closely shaven, our meals were all vegetarian, we drank only water or tea, and of course smoking was strictly prohibited (those caught smoking were loudly berated and forced to kneel in seiza on the gravel outside the training hall for up to an hour) and we were on a tight schedule that began at 4:00 am (or even earlier at times) and ended with lights out at 9:00 pm.

At 4:00 am we awoke, swiftly put away our futons and gathered in the main hall to chant Odaimoku until everyone was assembled. Then in shifts we would go the hall for water purification and perform suigyo (lit. water practice). Suigyo is the practice of pouring buckets of icy cold water over oneself while chanting prayers and a passage from the verses of chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra. I believe this is meant to be a form of austerity, but it also served to get our blood going and to keep us alert and warm during those early morning hours. By 5:00 am we would be dressed in our robes and kesa and gather in the front yard. From there we would march in a procession (while chanting Odaimoku to the rhythm of hand drums called uchiwa-taiko) up to Kuon-ji to participate in the morning service there. This morning service also included chanting long sections from the Lotus Sutra, so that by the time we finished Shingyo Dojo we had recited the entire Lotus Sutra. After the morning service at Kuon-ji we would march back down the mountain to Nichiren Shonin’s mausoleum. There we would hold a brief service. Finally, we would return to the training hall by about 7:00 am and perform one more service. After that we would receive instructions and exhortations from the head instructor and his assistants. Actually, once the head instructor had left, the assistants would usually loudly rebuke us for all our failings and lack of sincerity and try to instill in us a sense of deep shame and determination to do better. On occasion this would actually involve physical rough housing, such as when one older novice was hauled up to the front of the hall by his collar. I think that if you have ever been in boot camp you can imagine what went on at this time, though likely without the profanity once associated with boot camp (though this was all in Japanese so there may have been some but I strongly doubt it). After that we would have breakfast at 8:00 am followed by the cleaning of the dining hall, the training hall, the dormitories, the teacher’s quarters, and the grounds. From 9:00 am until noon we would receive lectures on various topics pertaining to conducting services, singing hymns, instruction in practices like the copying of the sutra, and the logistics of managing a temple. As Shingyo Dojo progressed we even received lectures addressing various social issues (though of course these were Japanese social issues not always relevant to Americans). At noon we had lunch, and from 1:00 pm until 3:30 pm we were given more lectures in the training hall. At 3:30 pm we would assemble in the front yard and then march down to Nichiren Shonin’s mausoleum and perform a brief service there, and then we marched back to the training hall to perform the evening service. The evening service got more and more elaborate as Shingyo Dojo progressed as we incorporated more and more of what we learned – and this involved chanting, hymn singing, the inscription of toban (memorial markers), and the use of various instruments such as the drums, bells, and gongs. Towards the end of Shingyo Dojo we performed a very long and elaborate service for the hungry ghosts (J. segaki). At 5:00 pm we had supper. At 6:00 pm we had evening lessons, but most of the time this period was for the recitation of the sutra and Odaimoku, including the practice of Shodaigyo meditation. Shodaigyo consists of a period of silent sitting to get calm and centered, followed by the chanting of Odaimoku to the rhythm of a taiko drum (starting slow, getting gradually faster, then tapering off again into a slower tempo), and then closing with another period of silent contemplation. At 8:00 pm we had time to visit the hot tubs and then work on copying out the 16th chapter of the Lotus Sutra (by the end of Shingyo Dojo we had each finished inscribing the entire 16th chapter and these were presented to the Gohonzon during the aforementioned Segaki service). 9:00 pm was lights out. This routine changed a bit towards the last couple of weeks. At that time we began hiking to various temples in the area. At these temples we would stop in front of the hondo (main hall) and recite the Lotus Sutra (usually chapters 16 or 21) and then we would be invited in to receive offerings that we would put into carry bags we brought with us. The offerings consisted of soda, juice, and various pastries. We would bring these back to our training hall and would be permitted to have them in the evening after dinner.

Upon completing our training in Shingyo Dojo, we all became kyoshi, that is to say fully ordained ministers. The newly ordained Japanese ministers were now empowered to be the head ministers of their temples. Most of them were the sons of ministers and in time would inherit responsibility for the family temple, performing funerals and memorial services for the danka (donor families) of the temple. In the case of the three of us who were American ministers with no temples to inherit, we were invited to the private quarters of the current abbot of Kuon-ji, Nichiko Fuji. For each of us he had inscribed the Odaimoku on a banner and he told each of us that it was his hope that we would propagate the Lotus Sutra and Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in North America.

For my part, I have found this to be very difficult. Because of its associations with Japanese nationalism, the alleged intolerance of its founder Nichiren, and the aggressive, intolerant, and materialistic way of presenting Nichiren Buddhism perpetrated by a certain Japanese new religion, the reputation of Nichiren Buddhism outside Japan has been greatly tarnished. Also, many Americans seek out Buddhism as a form of self-help therapy or a meditative discipline to take up in their spare time, and Nichiren Buddhism seems too devotional, too much like a Japanese version of “church.” It does not match people’s preconceptions about what Buddhism should be, and has never been as popular as Zen, Tibetan, or Vipassana forms of Buddhism. The greatest difficulty I have found, however, is in my own position as an ordained Buddhist minister who is at the same time a householder with a full time secular job and a daughter in middle school. What I have discovered is that it is difficult to find a meaningful role in a non-Buddhist society as a Buddhist minister; and even more difficult to even find the time to function in that capacity. The only time that I am able to function as a minister is when I assist at services on Sunday mornings at the San Jose Buddhist temple; when I hold a 2 hour meeting on Sunday afternoons (consisting of sitting meditation, discussion of the Dharma, and a Nichiren Shu service) in San Francisco at a small dojo that has been made available to me; and on Thursday nights when I go to the Nichiren Buddhist International Center to help the manager there translate the Nichiren Shu liturgy into English. It has caused me to wonder about my role, and in turn to wonder about what possible role and meaning there can be for a secularized Buddhist minister. To that end, I have long been contemplating the sutra and vinaya portions of the Tripitika and researching how the Sangha of itinerant mendicants who literally cut ties with the world was transformed into an order of secularized clergy.

From Itinerant Mendicants to Married Ministers

In the discourse known as “The Fruits of the Homeless Life” King Ajatasattu (Skt. Ajatashatru) asks the Buddha, “Can you, Lord, point to such a reward visible here and now as a fruit of the homeless life?” In essence, asking the Buddha what practical benefit there is to becoming a follower of the Buddha in the sense of leaving the life of a regular householder with a secular job and family in order to practice the Buddha Dharma full time. In that discourse the Buddha describes how a householder meets with a Tathagata (that is to say a Buddha) and gains faith in him after hearing the Dharma. The discourse describes that householder’s reflection as follows:

The household life is close and dusty, the homeless life is free as air. It is not easy, living the household life, to live the fully perfected holy life, purified and polished like a conch-shell. Suppose I were to shave off my hair and beard, don yellow robes and go forth from the household life into homelessness! (Walshe, p. 99)

The householder proceeds to do so and becomes a homeless mendicant or bhikshu in the monastic Sangha and takes on the rules of conduct known as the vinaya. The discourse goes on to describe the lifestyle of the bhikshu in more or less broad terms (as opposed to the detailed explication of the rules in the vinaya portion of the Tripitika), and how the bhikshu restrains his senses, maintains mindfulness, abandons worldly desires, purifies his mind of the various hindrances (like ill-will and hatred), attains states of deepening meditative concentration, and ultimately attains nirvana and knows for himself that “Birth is finished, the holy life has been led, done is what had to be done, there is nothing further here.” (Ibid, p. 108).

In this discourse the Buddha makes it clear to the skeptical inquirer, King Ajatashatru, what the lifestyle of a bhikshu should be, and the ultimate purpose of it. The discourse, and of course the vinaya, make it very clear that bhikshus or Buddhist monks (and by extension bhikshunis or nuns) are not to have families, not to engage in any productive labor, not to establish any permanent homes, and are to live a life of full time contemplation while living on alms and moving from place to place except during the rainy seasons in India.

Before moving on to the changes to the Sangha that occurred in East Asian Buddhism, it needs to be remembered that the Pali Canon itself records that the Buddha was open to the adaptation of the precepts, and therefore the rules and regulations of the Sangha, in different situations. For instance, at one time, the Buddha’s disciple Katyayana had returned to Avanti, his homeland, to teach the Dharma, but in that remote land he had found it difficult to find the minimum number of ten monks required to ordain new monks. He also found that some of the precepts set forth by the Buddha were inappropriate for those living in Avanti where the environment and customs were different from those found in the kingdoms where the Buddha was teaching. To remedy this, Katyayana sent one of his students, whom he had ordained after finally managing to find enough monks for the ordination, to see the Buddha and ask if the rules could be changed to fit the local customs and environment. The Buddha agreed to this, and stated that in the outlying kingdoms it would henceforth be permissible to confer the full admission with only five monks present. He also allowed monks to wear shoes, bathe more frequently, use hides for coverings, and wear an extra robe for a longer period of time in order to suit the local customs and the harsher environment of the outlying kingdoms like Avanti. This incident is important because it shows that the Buddha did allow for a certain amount of flexibility in the rules and regulation that he set forth, and that as long as the integrity of the Buddha Dharma was not harmed, he allowed for the adaptation of Buddhism to new situations. It was this principle of allowing the precepts to suit the local customs and circumstances that would allow Buddhism to grow into a world religion. In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta the Buddha even says, “If they wish, the order may abolish the minor rules after my passing.” (Ibid, p. 270) Unfortunately, neither Ananda nor anyone else took the time to ask the Buddha which of the rules were minor, and so at the first council it was decided to keep all the precepts just as the Buddha had given them. None of the rules were designated as minor or abolished. So it is an open question as to exactly how much adaptation the Buddha would have permitted.

When Buddhism made the transition to East Asia the Confucian elite were scandalized by the Buddhist claim that the highest path in life was to abandon one’s family and become a vagrant. Because Indian itinerant mendicancy was neither welcome nor practical in East Asia, Buddhist temples eventually supported themselves through farming and other more stable sources of income. The Ch’an Master Baizhang Huaihai (720-814) renowned for authoring the monastic rules of Ch’an or Zen Buddhism is supposed to have said, “A day without work is a day without eating” (Ferguson, p. 79) on the occasion when his disciples hid his farming tools because they feared that their aging master was in need of a rest. The Indian itinerant mendicant thereby became the East Asian landholding and land working monastic.

In addition, according to Kenneth Ch’en, very few Buddhist “monks” were actually fully ordained bhikshus. In T’ang China, ordination meant that one became a shramanera or “novice” who took only the ten precepts for the shramanera. “Ordinarily the next step was to proceed toward the stage of a bhikshu or monk, but in China the majority of the order preferred to remain as shramanera. Only those with great ambition or those who were important personalities became monks by going through the upasampada or full ordination.” (Ch’en, p. 247) There were indeed masters of the vinaya in China, but it would seem as though East Asian Buddhism as a whole was never totally committed to reproducing the exact lifestyle and functions of the Indian Buddhist Sangha.

Japan especially was never comfortable with the implementation of the vinaya. The Chinese vinaya master Chien-chen (J. Ganjin 688-763) brought the Dharmaguptaka recension of the precepts found in the Vinaya in Four Parts (Ch. Ssu fen lu; J. Shibun ritsu) to Japan in the year 753 after many trials and tribulations (11 years of five unsuccessful attempts to cross over to Japan prior to the sixth successful trip and by that time Chien-chen had become partially blind and thirty-six of his companions had died due to shipwrecks, attacks by pirates, and other hardships). The Japanese imperial court and Buddhist clergy had eagerly sought this transmission from Chien-chen so that they could claim a legitimate transmission of the precepts. And yet, things did not work out as envisioned. Daigan and Alician Matsunaga summarize what occurred:

Unfortunately by the time Ganjin arrived, the Ritsuryo government had already formulated some definite ideas of its own concerning ideal priestly behavior, which were supported by certain senior monks serving as government officials. It was natural for Ganjin to presume that after all the difficulties he had experienced in reaching Japan at the express request of the government, that he should be solely in charge of matters concerning ordination. In the eyes of the government on the other hand, Ganjin may have been a great vinaya master, but he was not knowledgeable regarding either the language or situation in Japan. A Japanese system of ordination had already been devised by now and Ganjin’s presence was viewed primarily as a formality to fulfill orthodox Buddhist requirements. If a candidate for ordination received government sanction, no need was visualized for the type of training Ganjin considered to be necessary; thus from the start the relationship between Ganjin and the government was strained. In 758 Ganjin resigned as an official of the Sogo (Bureau of Priests) and placed his disciple Hosshin in charge of official ordinations. The Zoku Nihonji tactfully gave the reason for Ganjin’s retirement to be that he found political affairs to confusing for his advanced age (he was 71). (Matsunaga, p. 51)

The imperial court in Japan was not at all interested in importing a system whereby itinerant mendicants would wander the countryside preaching the Dharma to all, subsisting on alms given by private citizens, and meditating in the forest. Rather, it was the case that Buddhism was viewed as something that could serve the state. Starting in the Asuka period (552-710), Buddhism had been sponsored by nobles such as the Soga clan and then established as the state religion by Prince Shotoku because it served as a vehicle for bringing in the high culture of China and more remotely India, and so its more sophisticated forms of prayer, esoteric rituals, and appeals to the protection and blessings of the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and protective deities could bring health, wealth, and happiness to the rulers and the nation. In fact, it was even illegal to attempt to spread it among the common people, and monks and nuns were restricted to service within the temples and were viewed as a part of the court bureaucracy. Again, the Matsunagas provide a handy summary:

For all practical purposes, Asuka Buddhism functioned as a mundane instrument of the ruling classes. In other words, it was utilized as a superior form of magic and shamanism to enforce the roles of the Imperial family and aristocracy. Prior to the introduction of Buddhism, the indigenous faith had used prayers, divination and other practices as a means of relating to the powers of nature believed to be kami. When Buddhism entered the early society it was immediately viewed as another form of theurgy, in fact a more potent variety in view of its acceptance by Japan’s powerful civilized continental neighbors. The Buddhist images, having no counterpart in the native faith, were regarded with awe and gained popularity among certain court factions as having powerful efficacy in promoting material prosperity, the cure of illness and aversion of calamities… At this period the image itself was believed to possess powers and the philosophical significance tended to be disregarded. (Ibid, p. 17)

Prince Shotoku (574-622) accepted Buddhism as the state religion. He even incorporated the Threefold Refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha into Japan’s first constitution. Two years after his death, in 624, the Empress Suiko instituted a Bureau of Priests (J. Soga) in order to oversee the Sangha and prevent misconduct by the monks and nuns. In 645 the Taika Reforms were initiated in order to create a centralized government modeled after the Chinese T’ang dynasty. This included the creation of a civil and criminal law code known as the Ritsuryo code, the first version of which was promulgated in 701. The Ritsuryo code included rules and regulations governing the Buddhist monks and nuns known as the Soniryo code. In this way, Buddhism became an official part of the Japanese imperial bureaucracy. In the Nara period, the Emperor Shomu (r. 724-749) instituted a system of national temples for the protection of the nation in 741, culminating in the creation of the Todaiji in 757. Kazuo Kasuhara’s A History of Japanese Religion provides a helpful account of how this was done and the motives behind it:

After about 732, relations with the Korean kingdom of Silla became strained. Year by year they worsened, and the court began to fear an invasion from the Korean peninsula. In addition, an epidemic disease, possibly smallpox, that had broken out at Tsukushi, on Kyushu, in 735 began to spread throughout western Japan. In 737 the disease reached Nara, where it claimed many victims among the aristocracy, including the minister of the left, Fujiwara no Muchimaro (680-737), and his three brothers. In March 737, with the country torn by crises at home and abroad, Emperor Shomu (r. 724-49) decreed that each province should make images of Shakyamuni Buddha and two attendants, as well as one copy of the Daihannya-kyo (Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra; in Sanksrit, Mahaprajnaparamita-sutra). In light of the turmoil at the time, it is clear that the intent of Shomu’s decree was not simply to encourage Buddhism in Japan but also to enlist the aid of Buddhism in helping that state overcome the crises it faced.

In 740, Shomu commanded that each province make ten copies of the Lotus Sutra and erect a seven-story pagoda. In March of the next year, he ordered each province to erect another seven-story pagoda and make ten copies each of the Golden Light Sutra, and the Lotus Sutra. In addition, a copy of the Golden Light Sutra transcribed in gold ink by the emperor himself was to be placed in each pagoda, with prayers to various buddhas for the protection of the nation. Finally, two provincial temples (kokubunji) were to be erected in each province: a monastery (kokubunji) to be called Konkomyo Shitenno Gokoku no Tera (Temple to Seek the Protection of the Nation by the Four Heavenly Kings, housing a copy of the Golden Light Sutra) and a nunnery (kokubunniji) to be called Hokke Metsuzai no Tera (Temple for the Elimination of Sins Through the Lotus Sutra, housing a copy of that sutra). This decree of 741 established the provincial temple system.

The Golden Light Sutra promises that four heavenly kings will protect the nation and people that reverence and propagate this sutra. The heavenly kings will fend off sovereign enemies and bestow prosperity and happiness on the sutra’s devotees. The Golden Light Sutra had long been esteemed in China as a powerful spiritual protector of the nation from calamities. Shomu’s imperial decree specifically mentions the intended recipients of the sutra’s blessings. Prayers were offered for eternal happiness of the spirits of deceased emperors and loyal officials from the Fujiwara and other major families; for the happiness and well-being of the reigning emperor and his family and of the Fujiwara, Tachibana, and other great clans; and for the defeat and destruction of wicked, rebellious subjects. Clearly the provincial temples were not intended primarily as places for religious practice leading to enlightenment and salvation. They were institutions committed to the protection of the state and the preventing of national calamity through the quasi-magical powers of Buddhism. The provincial temple system cannot be idealized as a model achievement of Buddhist culture during Shomu’s reign. (Kasuhara, pp. 65-66)

Given that Buddhism was accepted into Japan not out of respect for the Buddha’s institution of the Sangha as an assembly of mendicants seeking liberation from birth and death but for the magical efficacy it was hoped Buddhist ceremonies would provide the state, it should not be surprising that, before long the Dharmaguptaka precepts were declared Hinayana and therefore obsolete. Saicho (767-822), the founder of the Japanese Tendai school of Buddhism, was the one who initiated the move away from the so-called Hinayana vinaya traditions.

After the arrival of Chien-chen, the Japanese government sanctioned three precept platforms (J. kaidan) for the reception of the monastic precepts in the middle of the eighth century. In order to join the Sangha, candidates had to go to one of these three official precept platforms in order to take refuge in the Three Treasures and accept the Dharmaguptaka precepts. Saicho, however, believed that it was inconsistent for Mahayana Buddhists to have to abide by Hinayana precepts. According to Saicho, Mahayana Buddhists should accept the 10 major and 48 minor bodhisattva precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra (Ch. Fan wang ching), a sutra that was allegedly translated by Kumarajiva. The conservative clergy of the older schools of Japanese Buddhism opposed this because they wished to maintain control over the ordinations of Buddhist monastics, but Saicho’s efforts finally bore fruit after his death in 822 CE. According to Paul Groner:

The Fan wang precepts were a set of Mahayana rules compiled in China in the fifth century. They were very popular in East Asia and often conferred on laymen in order to strengthen their Buddhist ties. Chien-chen used them in this manner when he performed Fan wang ordinations shortly after his arrival in Japan. In addition, the Fan wang precepts were also conferred on monks and nuns, not to give them the status of monks and nuns, but to reinforce the Mahayana quality of their attitudes and practices. Most monks saw no conflict between receiving the Ssu fen lu full ordination (upasampada) first and the Fan wang ordination second. (Groner, p. 9)

Saicho reversed this. For his own Tendai trainees, he wished them to take the precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra first, and then train for twelve years on Mt. Hiei as bodhisattva monks. At the end of that training they could then take the Dharmaguptaka precepts taken by the other monks and nuns in Japan at that time. This would achieve two things: 1. It would remove the Tendai monks from the oversight of the Sogo (Bureau of Priests) and 2. It would ensure that Tendai monks were thoroughly Mahayana in their views and aspirations and would not turn to more limited Hinayana views and aspirations by taking Hinayana precepts during their initial training. Permission to build a new precept platform at Mt. Hiei, the head temple of Saicho’s Tendai school, for the sole transmission of the Mahayana precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra was finally granted by the government after Saicho’s death. After its construction in 827, the Mahayana precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra became the standard of conduct for almost all Japanese Buddhists.

Saicho’s plan of having Tendai monks live according to the lifestyle and aims spelled out in the Brahma Net Sutra and also according to the lifestyle and regulations of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya did not become a reality. For many reasons that Paul Groner discusses in his book on Saicho, the Tendai monks never did take the Dharmaguptaka vinaya. In fact sometime between 823 and 828 and again in 877 the court actually issued edicts prohibiting the Tendai monks and the monks of Nara from taking each other’s precepts. From that time on, the Tendai monks of Japan took only precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra.

Even these were viewed as obsolete by later generations of Tendai monks. “Several centuries after Saicho’s death, a movement began in the Tendai School to deemphasize the role of the Fan wang precepts as Tendai precepts in favor of the more ambiguous formless precepts of the Lotus Sutra.” (Ibid, p. 205) Japanese Buddhist monks were basically trying to find a set of precepts or, even better, a single precept that was at once the most profound and the least exacting and therefore the most flexible.

Part of the reason for this discomfort with the precepts was that it was believed that people were no longer capable of living up to specified codes of conduct, whether householder or monastic, because the Latter Age of the Dharma (J. mappo) had arrived. According to “prophecies” given by the Buddha (in both Pali works and Mahayana sutras) there would be a period of decline in the teaching and practice of the Buddha Dharma after the Buddha’s passing. The first period would be the age of the True Dharma, which would last for 500 or 1,000 years (depending on the source text) during which it would be possible to hear the Dharma, practice it, and attain liberation. This would be followed by the period of the Imitative Dharma for another period of 1,000 years during which time it would be possible to practice to some extent but final liberation would no longer be possible. Then the Latter Age of the Dharma would begin, during which time even practice would become corrupted. According to an essay attributed to Saicho called The Candle of the Latter Dharma (J. Mappo tomyo ki), in the Latter Age, it would no longer be possible to find pure monks so that one should instead respect and support the nominal monks. The Candle of the Latter Dharma says:

However, the point under discussion here concerns the fact that in the Latter Dharma, there are only nominal bhikshus. These nominal bhikshus are the True Treasures of the world. There are no other fields of merit where one can plant merit. Furthermore, if someone were to keep the precepts of the Latter Dharma, this would be exceedingly strange indeed. It would be like a tiger in the marketplace. Who would believe it? (Rhodes, p. 9)

This kind of thinking was very influential from the 12th century on. Starting with Honen (1133-1212), the idea was put forward that one could no longer attain liberation through standard Buddhist practices or observance of the precepts but only through total reliance on the saving power of Amitabha Buddha. In 1175, at the age of 42, Honen chanced upon a passage in Shan-tao’s Commentary on the Sutra of Meditation on the Buddha of Infinite Life that he felt clarified all his doubts about the way to attain buddhahood in the Latter Age. The passage asserted that one should simply chant the nembutsu, Namu Amida Butsu, single-mindedly at all times, and that this was the practice that accorded with the original vow, or 18th vow, of Amitabha Buddha. This became the inspiration for Honen’s insistence on the exclusive practice of nembutsu. He began to teach all who would listen about the exclusive practice of nembutsu that he insisted could save all people in the Latter Age of the Dharma. According to Honen, all people, without any qualification except faith in Amitabha Buddha, could become assured of rebirth in the Pure Land.

Not everyone was impressed by Honen’s teachings. The growing popularity of Honen’s movement and the excesses of some of his followers particularly distressed the monks of Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei. In 1204 they petitioned Emperor Gotoba (1180-1239) to have Honen’s exclusive nembutsu movement suppressed. The Tendai monks were especially disturbed by the antinomian tendencies of Honen’s disciples Gyoku and Junsai (aka Anraku). Gyoku had achieved notoriety by teaching that one need only say the nembutsu once in order to be saved, and that any practice beyond that was superfluous. Junsai had the dubious reputation of being the handsomest monk in Japan and was quite popular with the noble ladies of Kyoto. Honen and his movement had the sympathy of many at court, so no action was taken against him or his followers at that time. Honen himself repudiated the doctrine of “once-calling” and supposedly expelled Gyoku. He also refuted the idea that by relying on the nembutsu one could continue to indulge in wrongdoing. However, both these ideas seemed to be implied in Honen’s teachings on the saving power of even a single recitation of nembutsu. In order to rein in the excesses of some of his disciples, Honen had them sign a seven-article pledge. This did not stop the abuses and excesses however. Nor did it quell the criticisms from the Buddhist establishment.

In 1205 a new petition requesting the suppression of Honen and his disciples was presented to Retired Emperor Gotoba (he had retired in the past year) from Kofukuji temple. Once again, the imperial court did nothing. Unfortunately, the indiscretion of two of his monks, Juren and the aforementioned Junsai, brought about a new crisis in 1206. While Retired Emperor Gotaba was away on a pilgrimage to the Kumano shrine, these two monks held an all night service at the palace at the invitation of some ladies of the court, two of whom were said to have been ordained without permission. It is not certain that anything untoward occurred, but to have monks staying overnight at the palace and ordaining court ladies without any supervision or permission was too much of a scandal to ignore. The enemies of the Pure Land movement finally got their wish in 1207 as the court ordered the execution of Juren, Junsai, and two other disciples, and the laicization followed by exile of Honen and seven of his disciples. Thanks to his influential friends, like the former regent Kujo Kanezane, Honen’s exile was comparatively mild. He was sent to the province of Tosa on the island of Shikoku and by the end of the year he was pardoned. He was not allowed to return to the capital however, and so he lived just outside Osaka for four years. In 1211 he was allowed to return to Otani in Kyoto, where he died the following year in 1212.

Shinran (1173-1262), the founder of the Jodo Shinshu, was a disciple of Honen who put into practice the logical implications of the faith-alone approach to Mahayana Buddhism that obviated the need for precepts or monastic practice. He was among those exiled in 1204. From the 16th century on the Jodo Shinshu became the most powerful and influential of all the Pure Land schools and one of the largest of all the schools of Japanese Buddhism to this day. It is Shinran who can be credited with establishment of the first openly married Buddhist clerical lineage in Japan. When he was exiled he was defrocked and from that point on he took the name Gutoku Shinran and declared that he was neither monk nor layman. In his postscript to his magnum opus the True Teaching Practice and Realization (J. Kyogyosho) he wrote about his view of the superior efficacy of the Pure Land path, the exile of his master Honen (who is called Genku here), and his defrocking by the court and his new status:

Reflecting within myself, I see that in the various teachings of the Path of Sages, practice and enlightenment died out long ago, and that the true essence of the Pure Land way is the path to realization now vital and flourishing.

Monks of Shakyamuni’s tradition in the various temples, however, lack clear insight into the teaching and are ignorant of the distinction between true and provisional; and scholars of the Chinese classics in the capital are confused about practices and wholly unable to differentiate right and wrong paths. Thus, scholar-monks of Kofuku-ji presented a petition to the retired emperor in the first part of the second month, 1207.

The emperor and his ministers, acting against the dharma and violating human rectitude, became enraged and embittered. As a result, Master Genku – the eminent founder who had enabled the true essence of the Pure Land way to spread vigorously [in Japan] – and a number of his followers, without receiving any deliberation of their [alleged] crimes, were summarily sentenced to death or were dispossessed of monkhood, given [secular] names, and consigned to distant banishment. I was among the latter. Hence, I am now neither a monk nor one in worldly life. For this reason, I have taken the term Toku [“stubble-haired”] as my name. Master Genku and his disciples, being banished to the provinces in different directions, passed a period of five years [in exile]. (Hirota, p. 289)

James Dobbins, in his study of Jodo Shinshu, points out the following about the name “Toku”: “The Shasekishu (“Sand and Pebbles”) indicates that this term was used to refer to monks who had ‘broken the precepts without any sense of remorse’ (hakai muzan). Shinran no doubt assumed this ignominious sobriquet as a public acknowledgement of his own fallen state. Therefore, it is likely that Shinran married sometime between 1204 and 1207.” (Dobbins, pp. 26-27) Dobbins claims that the reason Shinran was exiled along with Honen was because he had openly flaunted his married state and this was used against him, even though many monks at that time were already involved in covert marriages or sexual relationships of one kind or another. Shinran may have been married as many as three times, but it is certain that he had at least one wife, Eshinni, and that he had at least four and as many as six children with her. This was the beginning of the Jodo Shinshu lineage of married clergy and the precedent for openly married clergy in Japan, though the other schools of Japanese Buddhism would not follow suit until the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Before discussing the Meiji period and its secularization of Japanese Buddhist clergy, it is important to understand the role of Japanese Buddhism during the Edo period (1603-1868) under the Tokugawa Shogunate. Many of the traditions and roles of Japanese Buddhism are a legacy of this period, but the radical changes of the Meiji period were also a reaction to Edo-era Buddhism. The most important institution set up by the Tokugawa Shogunate was the danka (lit. donor household) system, whereby every family had to be registered with their local Buddhist temple, which would in turn take care of all its spiritual needs, particularly funerals and memorial services. This system was set in place sometime between 1635 and 1638 in order to root out Christianity. It also became a form of census for the Tokugawa rulers. Buddhist clergy became, in effect, government functionaries and caretakers of the dead. In the words of Kazuo Kasahara, “The systemization of relations between temple and parishioner meant the formalization of faith itself. Moreover, as priests increasingly devoted themselves to administration, they assumed the roles of civil registrars and funeral directors rather than religious leaders.” (Kasahara, p. 344) The danka system still survives, barely, in the 21st century, though Japanese citizens have not been required to register with a local temple since the end of the Edo period. Japanese Buddhist clergy are no longer census takers, but they are still viewed primarily as funeral directors (though even their monopoly on this role is slipping away). Buddhism as a religion of temple based priests devoted to the performance of funerals and memorial services is therefore largely a product of Edo period Buddhism, but not entirely. Many temples still owned tracts of farmland, but these lands were taken away after the Meiji period and again after WWII, leaving the temples more and more dependent on the funeral and memorial business as their major sources of income. (See Table 5 in Covell, p. 144)

In 1868 the Tokugawa Shogunate fell and the Meiji emperor was restored to power in the Meiji Restoration. Unfortunately, the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate brought with it a backlash against the Buddhist temples which the Tokugawa had made into an arm of their bureaucracy. The new government was determined to abolish the ideological underpinnings of the Tokugawa and replace it with their own. This meant the suppression of Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism and the promotion of Shinto as the state religion in 1870. Many Buddhist temples were destroyed as part of a violent anti-Buddhist movement that peaked in 1871. Richard Jaffe cites the following astounding figures, “Tamamuro Fumio estimates that of the approximately 200,000 Edo period temples, only 74,600 were left after the early years of the Meiji era.” (Jaffe, p. 58) On May 31, 1872 the government removed the civil laws dating back to the Edo period that prohibited Buddhist monks and nuns from marrying or eating meat (the Jodo Shinshu and Shugendo clergy had been exempt from these laws all along) in order to make Buddhist clergy no different from any other citizens in the eyes of the state. Here is a summary by Jaffe of these legal changes:

In the wake of the violence triggered by the harsh anti-Buddhist measures enacted by the officials of the new Meiji regime from 1868 to 1872, bureaucrats at the Kyobusho (Ministry of Religious Doctrine), the Okurasho (Ministry of Finance), and the Shihosho (Ministry of Justice) worked towards the complete disestablishment of Buddhism. As part of their efforts, the officials at these ministries steadily dismantled the remaining Edo period regulations governing clerical life and eliminated any perquisites that had previously been granted the clergy by virtue of their status as “home-leavers” (shukke). Despite opposition from the Buddhist leadership, in short order the clerics were ordered to assume surnames, to register in the ordinary household registration system (koseki), and to serve in the military. These changes reduced the Buddhist clergy to subjects like all other Japanese and rendered the clerical estate an occupation that was no different from any other career in the eyes of the state.

Without doubt the decriminalization of clerical marriage was the most contested of all the changes in clerical regulations. With the support of such Buddhists as Otori Sesso (1804-1904), an ex-Soto cleric who had been appointed to the Kyobusho, and the Tendai cleric Ugawa Shocho, on Meiji 5/4/25 the officials at the Kyobusho issued a regulation that stated, “From now on Buddhists clerics shall be free to eat meat, marry, grow their hair, and so on. Furthermore, there will be no penalty if they wear ordinary clothing when not engaged in religious activities.” Although all aspects of the new regulation, referred to as the nikujiki saitai law because it decriminalized meat eating and clerical marriage, were resisted by the leaders of the Buddhist denominations, the most prominent and vexatious feature of the regulation for the Buddhist leadership was the end to state penalties for clerical marriage. (Jaffe 1999, pp. 78-79)

Richard Jaffe, in his book Neither Monk Nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism, provides us with a history of these and other changes and the reactions of the various schools of Japanese Buddhism to these changes. Jaffe notes that all the schools of Japanese Buddhism with the exception of the Jodo Shinshu and the Shugendo practitioners were opposed to the legalization of clerical marriage, even though many temples in all the schools already had covertly married clergy. In addition, the laws did not force anyone to grow their hair, wear civilian clothing, eat meat, or get married. The leaders of the Japanese Buddhist schools knew, however, that without the coercive power of the state to back their own religious regulations the ordinary clergy would soon be openly doing as they wished (as they had been covertly all along). The bottom line is that the secular government of Japan had made it clear that they would no longer view Buddhist clergy as a special or privileged group and that if Buddhist monks and nuns wished to live as celibate monastics they were free to do so, but they would not be forced to do so and in fact they were expected to regard themselves as part of the secular world with all the duties and responsibilities demanded of any other Japanese citizen. We have come a long way from the time and culture of the Buddha when itinerant ascetic mendicants were respected for leaving the world and all its comforts, responsibilities, and entanglements behind so that they could live as full time contemplatives. The modern person may try to opt out of secular society for personal or religious reasons, but modern nation-states generally grant no special privileges or status to those who do so.

Nichiren Shu’s Transition to Married Clergy

As an ordained priest in the Nichiren Shu I would like to specifically review the position of Nichiren Shu in regard to this shift from Buddhist monasticism to a married clergy. First of all I’d like to say a word about who the Nichiren Shu is. As part of their attempts to consolidate and thereby control Buddhism, the Meiji government was instrumental in the formation of the modern Japanese Buddhist sects. On November 3, 1872 the Meiji government consolidated all the Buddhist schools in Japan into seven schools and demanded that each of them elect a chief priest (J. kancho). These seven schools were the Tendai, Shingon, Jodo, Zen, Jodo Shin, Ji, and Nichiren schools. This proved to be an untenable lumping together of many disparate schools and sub-schools and so eventually these seven major schools were allowed to divide into a larger number of smaller schools. In 1876, the school now known as Nichiren Shu was formed by the Itchi-ha (Harmony branch) lineages of Nichiren Buddhism that focused on the equality of both the former and latter halves of the Lotus Sutra. Today, Nichiren Shu is one of the major schools of Japanese Buddhism and the largest of the traditional Nichiren schools with 4,364 temples, and 3,852,911 members according to statistics from 2003 (Matsunami, p. 170) According to Nichiren Shu headquarters, as of September 2010 Nichiren Shu has 5,179 temples and 8,277 priests. Of those priests, 959 are female as of February 19, 2010. The temples that are part of the Nichiren Shu confederation of lineages include Kuon-ji on Mt. Minobu (the only temple established by Nichiren himself), Ikegami Honmon-ji (where Nichiren passed away and the current location of Nichiren Shu’s administrative headquarters), Seicho-ji (the temple where Nichiren trained a child), and Nakayama Hokekyo-ji (a temple famed for its 100 day winter ascetic practice, it was founded by Nichiren’s important lay follower Toki Jonin who ordained himself after the founder’s passing and collected many of Nichiren’s writings for safekeeping).

Nichiren himself did not emphasize adherence to the precepts. In fact, he referred to his contemporaries Eizon (1201-1290) and Ninsho (1217-1303) as “national traitors” (WNS1, p. 273) because they were propagating the “Hinayana” precepts of the Dharmaguptaka vinaya. In the “Shimoyama Lettter” (WNS5, pp. 71-75) Nichiren explained that in the Latter Age it was no longer appropriate to propagate the Hinayana precepts, as they would burden people who were not able to uphold them and whose delusions were too deep to be cured by them. He accused the precept masters of dishonesty and hypocrisy who were leading the nation of Japan to destruction by causing its rulers and people to rely on a teaching no longer appropriate to their own time and place.

In Nichiren’s view, the Hinayana precepts had long since been replaced by the Mahayana precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra instituted by Saicho (Grand Master Dengyo) at Mt. Hiei. Nichiren even refers to The Candle of the Latter Age attributed to Saicho. In his essay on spiritual practice appropriate to the people living in the Latter Age, “The Four Depths of Faith and Five Stages of Practice,” Nichiren wrote:

Grand Master Dengyo said, “I have discarded all 250 precepts.” Grand Master Dengyo was not the only one to do this. Chien-chen’s disciples, Ju-pao and Dochu, and the seven great temples (of Nara) all completely discarded the precepts as well. Grand Master Dengyo also cautioned future generations saying, “In the Latter Age of Degeneration a person who can uphold the precepts will be as astonishing as a tiger in the marketplace. Who can believe this?” (WNS4, p. 106)

In that same essay he also wrote:

Beginners should refrain from giving alms, observing the precepts, and the rest of the first five bodhisattva practices and for the present should instead take up the practice of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo which is the spirit of the single moment of understanding by faith and the stage of rejoicing, This is the true intention of the Lotus Sutra. (Ibid, p. 104)

It is clear that Nichiren was no longer advocating even the Mahayana precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra. He believed that the practice of revering the true spirit of the Lotus Sutra by invoking its title transcended any precept codes or particular Buddhist practices or lifestyles inherited from the past as those were all just provisional methods based on provisional teachings that were no longer efficacious. The following statements of his in other writings also express his view that faith in the Lotus Sutra is what leads to buddhahood and not the observance of precepts:

Speaking of Ajatashatru and Devadatta: “I am convinced that ordinary people in the Latter Age of Degeneration commit sins more or less. Whether or not such a man can reach Buddhahood depends not on how serious his sin is but whether or not he believes in the Lotus Sutra. (WNS2, p. 188)

It is preached in the Lotus Sutra, the “Appearance of the Stupa of Treasures” chapter, “Upholding this sutra is what is called observing the precepts.” (WNS3, p. 214)

In addition, Nichiren would occasionally refer to himself as a “monk without precepts.” This may be because as a novice monk with no social standing from a country temple, he may never have been able to take the full Mahayana precepts from the precept platform at Mt. Hiei – there were, in fact, many monks at that time who were shidoso, or “privately ordained” who did not or even could not receive full ordination at any of the officially sanctioned precept platforms. Or it could be that in having been exiled (twice) by the government he had been defrocked as Shinran had been. Unlike Shinran, however, Nichiren continued to live the life of a Buddhist monk until the end of his life. He never married, he remained a vegetarian, and he only drank alcohol for medicinal purposes towards the end of his life. Yet, he makes no claims for himself on this basis. He sees upholding or rejecting the precepts as a matter of little to no import compared to his primary mission of upholding and teaching the Lotus Sutra and particularly the practice of chanting its title as the supremely efficacious Buddhist practice for the Latter Age. Here are some passages from his writings that express this view:

Because I am a priest of no precepts who holds perverse views, the heavenly gods hate me and I am poor in both food and clothing. Nevertheless, I recite the Lotus Sutra and from time to time preach it. It is exactly as if a huge snake were clasping a jewel in its mouth or sandalwood trees were growing amid the eranda groves. I throw away the eranda and offer the sandalwood, or cover the body of the snake and bestow the jewel. (WNDII, p. 944)

I, Nichiren, do not observe the precepts with my body. Nor is my heart free from the three poisons. But since I believe in this [Lotus] sutra myself and also enable others to form a relationship with it, I had thought that perhaps society would treat me rather gently. Probably because the world has entered into the latter age, even monks who have wives and children have followers, as do priests who eat fish and fowl. I have neither wife nor children, nor do I eat fish or fowl. I have been blamed merely for trying to propagate the Lotus Sutra. Though I have neither wife nor children, I am known throughout the country as a monk who transgresses the code of conduct, and though I have never killed even a single ant or mole cricket, my bad reputation has spread throughout the realm. This may well resemble the situation of Shakyamuni Buddha, who was slandered by a multitude of non-Buddhists during his lifetime. (WNDI, p. 42)

I, Nichiren, am not the founder of any school, nor am I a latter day follower of any older school. I am a priest without precepts, neither keeping the precepts nor breaking them. (Ibid, p. 669)

Now I am neither a sage nor a worthy man; I neither adhere to the precepts, nor am I without precepts; I neither possess wisdom nor lack it. Nevertheless, I was born some 2,220 years after the Buddha’s passing, in the last five-hundred-year period, when the daimoku of the Lotus Sutra is destined to spread. Before any other person of the various schools – whether here in Japan or in the far-off land of India and China – could begin to invoke the daimoku, I began chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in a loud voice and have continued to do so for more than twenty years. (Ibid, p. 671)

In order to reflect his new understanding of the Buddha and Buddhist practice, Nichiren believed that the time had come for the establishment of a new precept platform. Nichiren taught that it was impractical for the ordinary person in the Latter Age of the Dharma to attempt to approach awakening by merely adhering to a code of conduct. People no longer felt capable of living up to these various sets of precepts; many of those who did had come to realize that morality and ethics alone do not bring anyone closer to awakening. Of course, there were also hypocrites who strictly adhered to the letter of the precepts while violating their spirit. In order to remedy this, Nichiren taught that the true spirit of all the various sets of precepts is expressed in the Lotus Sutra. Therefore, the most important thing is to simply strive to uphold the Lotus Sutra in order to transcend one’s imperfections and attain awakening. This is the true fulfillment of all the precepts.

The Manual of Nichiren Buddhism explains this as follows:

Nichiren claimed that the kaidan at Hieizan was established for the priests whose duty was to save the people of the semblance age of the Dharma and that a new kaidan should be established for the priests who would save those of the latter age of the Dharma. He also held that not only priests but also laymen should come to the Kaidan of the Essential Teaching and receive the Fundamental Precept of Nichiren Buddhism, that is to chant the Daimoku, which should be practiced by all living beings, priests or not. (Murano 1995, p. 62)

“Teaching, Practice and Proof,” a sacred writing of the Nichiren tradition, refers to the “fundamental precept” of upholding the Lotus Sutra as the “Diamond Chalice Precept.” The following passage from the Brahman Net Sutra is a possible source for this precept: “This precept of the diamond chalice is the source of all Buddhas, the source of all bodhisattvas and the seed of the Buddha nature.” Nichiren realized that if the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Teaching, Myoho Renge Kyo, is the enlightenment of the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha and therefore the seed of buddhahood, then Myoho Renge Kyo is itself the Diamond Chalice Precept. By chanting Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, practitioners would be upholding the Diamond Chalice Precept that embraces all other precepts. Nichiren goes on to say in “Teaching, Practice and Proof”:

Afterwards, [explain that] the core realization of Myoho Renge Kyo, which is the main gate of the Lotus Sutra, contains all the merits of the practices and virtues of all the buddhas of the past, present, and future, which manifests as the five characters. How could these five characters not contain the merits of all precepts? Once the practitioner has this comprehensive Wonderful Precept, even if he wants to destroy it, he can not. This has been called “the diamond chalice precept.” All buddhas of the past, present, and future keep this precept. All the Dharma-bodies, enjoyment-bodies, and transformation-bodies become the buddhas of no beginning and no end. The Great Master T’ien-t’ai wrote: “[The Buddha] secretly put this into all the teachings and did not expound it.” Now when all people, whether wise or foolish, householder or home-leaver, upper or lower class, of the present latter age of the Dharma train themselves in accord with the view of Myoho Renge Kyo, why should they not obtain buddhahood? [The 21st chapter of the Lotus Sutra states:] “Therefore, the man of wisdom who hears the benefits of these merits and who keeps this sutra after my extinction will be able to attain the awakening of the Buddha definitely and doubtlessly.” The people of the provisional schools who slip away from this decisive teaching of the three Buddhas (Shakyamuni, Many Treasures, and the emanation buddhas of the ten directions) will definitely end up in the Avichi Hell. Similarly, if this precept is so excellent, then all the precepts of the previous provisional teaching will have no merit. Without any merit, the daily rules of abstention are useless. (Kyo gyo sho gosho in the Showa teihon p. 1488. translated by Yumi and Michael McCormick)

Based on this understanding of the precepts, Nichiren Buddhism teaches that the Hinayana precept platform and the Mahayana precept platform are now obsolete: the time has arrived for the precept platform of the Diamond Chalice Precept that subsumes all other precepts. From this point of view, the practice of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo ensures that morality and ethics are not unthinking, rigid adherence to any specific code of conduct. Rather, the moral and ethical life is based directly upon the wisdom and compassion of buddhahood. There is no need to go to a specially sanctioned place in order to receive the Diamond Chalice Precept. Wherever Namu Myoho Renge Kyo is recited becomes the precept platform where all can dedicate their lives to the Wonderful Dharma and attain enlightenment. It is the place where all people of the world, lay or ordained, can receive the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Flower Teaching directly from the Eternal Shakyamuni Buddha, just as the bodhisattvas from beneath the earth received it during the ceremony in the air. In a writing called “The Transmission of the Three Great Secret Dharmas” attributed to Nichiren, the Nichiren Buddhist position on the precept platform of the essential teaching [of the Lotus Sutra] (J. honmon no kaidan) is clarified (at least for a medieval Japanese context):

Regarding the kaidan center for the practice of the Lotus Sutra, should it not be established at the most outstanding place resembling the Pure Land of Mt. Sacred Eagle with the blessing of an imperial edict and a shogunal directive? Should it not be at such a time when the laws of the kingdom and Buddhist dharmas are in perfect accord with both king and his subjects all believing in the three great secret dharmas revealed in the essential section of the Lotus Sutra, and the meritorious work of King Virtuous and Monk Virtue Consciousness in the past recur in the evil and corrupt world in the Latter Age of Degeneration? We have to wait for the opportune time for its realization. This is what we call the actual precept dais (ji-no-kaidan), where all the people of India, China, and Japan as well as of the Saha World should repent their sins. Furthermore such heavenly beings as the great King of the Brahma Heaven and Indra should come to assemble to practice the Lotus teaching.

After the establishment of this kaidan of the essential section of the Lotus Sutra, the one on Mt. Hiei based on the theoretical section of the sutra would be useless. (WNS2, p. 290)

It would seem as though Nichiren were proposing that the celibate monastic lifestyle and the precepts that encoded that way of life were to be a thing of the past, an obsolete Hinayana practice. And yet, Nichiren never rejected that way of living the way Shinran had. In fact, he often exhorted his disciples to uphold Confucian and Buddhist standards of conduct even though they did not take such precepts formally or depend upon them for enlightenment. In the “Letter Sent with the Prayer Sutra” Nichiren states that one who upholds the Lotus Sutra in the Latter Age should be especially dedicated to the celibate monastic lifestyle of those who live by the precepts.

But now you have cast aside the Nembutsu and the other beliefs of the provisional teachings and have put your faith in the correct teaching. Hence you are in truth among the purest of the observers of the precepts, a sage. To begin with, anyone who is a priest, even if he is a follower of the provisional schools of Buddhism, should be pure [in the observance of the precepts], and how much more one who is a votary of the correct teaching! Though one may have had a wife and family when one was a follower of the provisional schools, in a time of great trouble such as the present, he should cast all these aside and devote himself to the propagation of the correct teaching. And in your case you were a sage to begin with [because you observed the precepts]. How admirable, how admirable. (WNDII, p. 461)

In the centuries after Nichiren’s passing, the various lineages of Nichiren Buddhism continued to uphold the monastic way of living, even if they did not formally take either the Dharmaguptaka vinaya or the Mahayana precepts of the Brahma Net Sutra. I would like to note that in the 17th century a Nichiren monk named Gensei (1623-1668) did teach the importance of the precepts and advocated the Lotus vinaya. A capsule biography on him can be found in the book Shapers of Japanese Buddhism, and I hope that someday some of Gensei’s writings on the Lotus vinaya and the value of precepts within the Nichiren Buddhist tradition will become available in English. Still, just knowing about him reveals to me that not only was the monastic lifestyle upheld by Nichiren Buddhist clergy (though probably no more or less strictly than the other monastic schools), but there were those who were especially interested in maintaining some form of precepts as part of their practice of the Lotus Sutra. For this reason, the nikujiki saitai law of 1872 that removed civil penalties for breaking the precepts was just as unwelcome to the leadership of Nichiren Shu as it was to the other schools of Japanese Buddhism, again with the exception of Jodo Shinshu and Shugendo.

On February 13, 1878, the heads of the Nichiren denomination likewise published a directive to their clergy that described the change in state policy and urged them not to violate the Buddhist precepts. Similar in tone to the brief directive issued from the Soto school, the document reminded the Nichiren clergy that

the basis of Buddhism is achieving enlightenment and liberation from attachments. Therefore, there is no abandoning of one’s obligations and entering the unconditioned unless one takes the tonsure, dons Buddhist robes, ceases sexual relations, and stops eating meat. That which is the most difficult to abandon is abandoned; that which is the most difficult to endure is endured. The names for laity and home-leavers are different from each other and their actions are also distinguished from each other. Furthermore, above, seek unlimited awakening, below, benefit the sentient beings of the nine realms. We should call those who transcend the masses, rise above the secular, impartially abandon conventional emotions, and earnestly avoid sullying their reputations as “Buddhist monks” (so).  (Jaffe 2001, p. 159)

The efforts of the leadership of the once monastic schools of Japanese Buddhism were futile however. The average “monk” had no real interest in being a celibate monastic, and within a generation the majority of the clergy within all the denominations of Japanese Buddhism were married with families. As Jaffe points out, this was nothing new in Japanese Buddhism. There had long been covert marriages by the clergy and cases of temples passed down from father to son even outside the Jodo Shinshu, but never before on such a scale and so openly. By the turn of the century the question as to whether or not there should be clerical marriage had become moot, and the question had become whether or not the Buddhist schools in Japan would admit that their clergy were getting married and passing their temples on to their sons and come to terms with the new situation.

Attempts to curb the spread of marriage among the clergy or to ignore the problem had failed miserably. At the 1891 pan-sectarian conference of Buddhist clerics in Nagoya, abolition of the sectarian prohibitions against nikujiki saitai was placed on the agenda but never came to the floor. … By the turn of the century, petitions requesting the acceptance of clerical marriage were being submitted regularly to the annual Tendai and Nichiren denomination congresses. One can only conclude that by the turn of the century the defense against nikujiki saitai was crumbling. (Jaffe, p. 193)

Still, the situation of a married Buddhist clergy is an awkward one. Fully ordained Buddhist clerics in Japan are still given the title bhikshus or bhikshunis, the same terms the Buddha respectively used to designate the male and female itinerant mendicants. And yet, the vast majority of Japanese Buddhist clerics are actually householders, with a wife and family (though most Japanese female clergy are in fact celibate according to Stephen Covell). Even some of the Japanese Buddhist clergy themselves apparently feel ambivalent about this situation. As late as June 1, 2000, the Nichiren Shu News (Nichiren Shu’s English language newspaper) published the following statements by Rev. Senchu Murano (who it should be noted also had a family) in an interview:

Japan is the only place where Buddhist priests have wives. This phenomenon is hardly understood in foreign countries. Monks do not get married in Taiwan, China, Tibet, and so forth. It is only in Japan that Buddhist priests get married.

Marriage of Buddhist priests attracts the first attention. Thus, from the beginning, Japanese priests are looked down upon. This is a big problem, and Japanese Buddhism will be ruined in the near future. (Oikawa, p. 3)

Even by the 21st century, however, the traditional schools of Japanese Buddhism, including Nichiren Shu, still have not officially endorsed or even admitted marriage among their clergy. Stephen Covell, in writing about the situation of married clergy in Japanese Buddhism in 2005, states that the Tendai sect bylaws were, “intentionally written vaguely to allow for great variation among individual temples, and to mask the presence of temple wives.” (Covell, pp. 112-113). I have discovered that the Nichiren Shu Constitution and Bylaws (effective from April 1st, 2002) are also guarded in the language that it uses when discussing the temple families (J. jizoku). Here are some excerpts:

Nichiren Shu Constitution

Chapter 11. Minister, Temple Family, and Members

73. The family (J. shinzoku) who lives with the head minister (jushoku, tan’nin, kyodo – apply to three types listed above) in the temple and who believe in our teachings and who are registered in the list are called jizoku (lit. temple-family).

73.2. The adult lady (J. seinen josei) among the jizoku who registered on the list of the jitei fujin is the jitei fujin (lit. temple garden lady).

73.3 The previous two articles apply to the shinzoku who live with the kyoshi and kyoshi-ho.

Nichiren Shu Bylaws

Chapter 29 Rules Regarding Jizoku and Jitei Fujin

Article 1. The shinzoku who lives with the head minister (jushoku, tan’nin, kyodo – apply to three types listed above) in the temple and who believe in our teachings and who are registered in the list are called jizoku except kyoshi and kyoshi-ho.

Article 2. The jizoku try to realize the founder’s instruction of service first and always practice and help the head minister and support the prosperity of Nichiren Shu and the temple and propagation for members and believers.

Article 3. The jiitei fujin is the adult lady among the jizoku and approved by the head minister.

Article 4. The jitei fujin is the primary person to carry out the duties of the jizoku, and make efforts to educate the disciple(s) and train the successor.

Article 5. The head minister has to register the jizoku and jitei fujin with the shumu socho (Chief Administrator).

Article 6. Registration according to the previous article will be registered on the jizoku daicho (list) and the jitei fujin daicho.

Article 6.2. If a change occurs the modification is supposed to be made promptly.

Article 7. The previous articles apply to all the families who live with the kyoshi of the temple.

Article 8. There should be two copies of the jizoku daicho and the jitei fujin daicho. The original will be kept at the main office of Nichiren Shu and the copy will be kept at the regional office.

Article 9. When there is no head minister (jushoku) due to death or other reasons, the jizoku and will be considered as jizoku until the successor is approved by the shumu socho (Chief Administrator).

Article 10. Jitei fujin can form an organization of Jitei fujin within every regional district for their edification, education, and deepening practice. However, depending on the district, they can organize a fujinkai together with other neighboring regional districts.

Article 10.2. To carry out the business of the fujinkai they can elect a president, vice-president, and board members by themselves.

Article 10.3. The term of the president, vice-president, and board members shall be two-years, but they can be re-elected.

Article 10.4 The shumu shocho (District Chief) has to register the name of the president of the fujinkai to the shumu socho.

Article 11. The jitei fujinkai will hold workshops and other activities.

Article 12. The jitei fujinkai will help with district activities according to the request of the shumu shocho.

Article 13. In order to communicate with each other, the jitei fujinkai can organize a national joint association of fujinkai.

Additions.

These rules effective from April 1st, 2002.Jizoku is enlisted in a mutual fund. (Summary of this addition)When these new rules come into effect, the current president, vice-president, and board members of the fujinkai are recognized according to the new rules, except the kyoshi and kyoshi-ho.The terms of the president, vice-president, and board members of the previous articles will be according to these new rules. (Translated by Rev. Chishin Hirai and Rev. Ryuei McCormick)

Nowhere is it directly said that the jitei fujin is or could be the wife of the head minister. The term is broad enough to include the head minister’s grandmother, mother, aunt, sister, or adult daughter. So the language could mean the wife of the head minister, but is able to avoid directly saying that such is the case. And to be fair, in some cases it may not. It is good that the jizoku are at least mentioned in the constitution, and given a whole chapter in the by-laws, and in fact are encouraged, if not expected, to participate actively in the life, faith, and activities of the temple. The constitution and by-laws do not say this, but the reality is that most Japanese Buddhist temples could not function without the assistance of the minister’s wife, and most Japanese temples would have no successors if not for the sons of the head ministers.

Japanese Buddhist temples have become, for all intents and purposes, family businesses that primarily deal with the performance of funeral and memorial services and the maintenance of graveyards for their danka members. According to survey results from 1993 cited by Jaffe, 73% of the members of the Soto Zen school prefer that their clergy be married, with only 5% preferring unmarried clergy. (Jaffe 2001, pp. 1-2). I cannot imagine that the average Japanese member of Nichiren Shu would feel any differently. Japanese Buddhists expect that temples are a family endeavor and that they exist to primarily perform services related to funerals, memorials, and the maintenance of graveyards. Japanese Buddhists may respect the itinerant mendicants of Theravada Buddhism, but that is not what they expect from their own temples.

Whether or not they still require such services is another story. When I was in Shingyo Dojo the instructors told us novices that a survey had been taken in Japan asking what people believed was the most useless profession. “Buddhist minister” was one of the top answers. As if to corroborate public opinion, in a 2006 article “Deprofessionalisation of Buddhist Priests in Conemporary Japan” Mitsutoshi Horii shows how Buddhist clergy are being edged out of their profession. Funerals are now being taken over by funeral companies, graveyard management by temples may be challenged legally on the grounds that such things should be relegated to social welfare corporations, involvement in charity and counseling work can be handled just as well if not better by professionals in those fields and not by clergy, and finally even faith healing is being subsumed by the movement to regulate traditional and alternative medicines. It would seem as though the roles and functions traditionally taken up by Japanese Buddhist clergy are no longer needed, and are no longer a reliable means of support.

It is clearly a time of crises for Japanese Buddhist clergy, as they try to come to terms with their status as married Buddhist clergy and look for ways to remain relevant and able to maintain their temples in an age where the need for organized religion in a secular society is an open question. But is there anything authentically Buddhist about a married Buddhist clergy, even if they do find a place in the world? Can there be a place in the world today for any kind of Buddhist clergy? Even the Reader I was given as part of the Shingyo Dojo program expresses this questioning of the role of Japanese Buddhist clergy in a secular world.

We, Buddhist priests, live in the actuality of the world. However, we, traditional Buddhists, regarded our traditions and customs so important that we neglected the needs of the people, causing the rise of new and new new religions.

Are we not accustomed to being branded “funeral Buddhism” and “prayer Buddhism” so long that we are overlooking the meaning of a prayer and that of death in religion? If there had been no death, there would have been no funerals. If human beings were omniscient and omnipotent, there could have been no prayers. Funerals and prayers were born when human beings felt that their ability was destined to be limited. Buddhists then prayed for the repose of the deceased, and at the same time, to find solemn meanings in the precious but uncertain life. They also prayed in response to the need of the wretched people suffering from calamities in heaven and on earth or various sicknesses, to ward off disasters befalling them and inducing happiness for them.

We may say that Buddhist priests have thus lived in the world, heeding the needs of the general public highly, but we cannot optimistically remain this way. To the best of our ability, we have to insist, “not to be contaminated by the worldly affairs.” How should we solve this very difficult problem: staying in the mud without being soiled? Perhaps we can understand it better by contrasting the two concepts of “popularity” and “vulgarity.”

“Popularity” means that Buddhist priests, who uphold the Dharma, intermingle with people in the world in order to improve them, that is to say, to cause Buddhist dharma to blossom among the general public. “Vulgarity,” on the other hand, does not involve the Buddhist dharma at all, with Buddhist priests catering to the whims of people in the world without purifying and improving them.

It may be inevitable for a Buddhist order and its priests to be spoiled as long as they are in a society. However, so long as priests continue purifying themselves, their actions will be regarded as reverential. Those priests with priestly spirit, who will never become contaminated by the worldly evils while associating with the secular world and who will walk with confidence on the way of saving the society, are disciples of the Eternal True Buddha. (Hori Reader, pp. 12-13)

As a non-Japanese member of the Nichiren Shu clergy in North America who is married with a daughter in middle school and who holds a full time job as a file clerk that leaves very little time for any religious activities I also wonder what my role is and what it should be. Is there anything even slightly authentic or meaningful about being a householder and a nominal bhikshu in a Japanese Buddhist lineage when I only engage in Buddhist activities with others one day a week on Sunday and even talking about Buddhism the rest of the week except in select online forums would be highly unwelcome and inappropriate? Is there any point to being an ordained member of the Sangha if one is a householder? Is there any point in being a Buddhist when it is really just a kind of hobby (though granted one that deals with ethics and meaning and engages in various contemplative practices) that I share with a few friends on the weekends and online? Now that I have explored how there came to be the kind of Sangha composed of householder clergy that I have become a part of, I would like to see if there is anyway to answer these questions.

The Buddhist Minister as Householder-Bodhisattva

First of all, it should be frankly admitted that Japanese clergy are not bhikshus or bhikshunis in the sense of itinerant mendicants, and the Japanese Sangha has never really been composed of itinerant mendicants in the first place. The vast majority of the Japanese clergy have also not been celibate monastics since the late 19th century. So what are they? And what are those of us outside Japan ordained in Japanese Buddhist lineages to make of ourselves? Strangely, I think it was the ultranationalist Nichirenist Tanaka Chigaku (1861-1939) who may have provided the best answer to that.

Tanaka Chigaku was a controversial reformer and ultranationalist. He was a Nichiren Shu clergyman from age 15 until age 19, but then left because he was disillusioned with the emphasis on shoju (conciliatory methods of teaching and propagation) over shakubuku (confrontational methods) as taught in the Nichiren Great Academy (the precursor to Rissho University) during the time that Tanaka was studying there. Tanaka emphasized shakubuku as a compassionate method to break people free of debilitating false views and that people should actively think about and choose which school of Buddhism to follow rather than passively accepting membership in whatever temple one’s family happened to belong to under the danka system. He also believed that Buddhism should not only be for funerals and memorials, but that it should be incorporated into the daily life of the family. To this end he created a ceremony for conferring the Lotus Sutra on newborn infants in 1886 and in 1887 he created the first Buddhist wedding ceremony in Japan. At this time the controversies over the issue of Buddhist clergy marrying, eating meat, and wearing secular clothes was still raging. Tanaka’s view was that the time for monks and nuns was over, and that Buddhist clergy in Japan should view themselves as lay bodhisattvas (J. zaike bosatsu) instead. He saw celibacy and the other rules previously upheld by the clergy as holdovers from Hinayana and provisional Mahayana Buddhism that he saw as world-denying and misogynistic. He did not see married clergy as the degeneration of Buddhism into a family business, but rather an opportunity to keep the temples alive as centers of lay practice. He even advocated that an academy should be set up for the wives of clergy so that they could take equal responsibility for the care of the temples and the teachings of Buddhism. Tanaka was convinced that lay Buddhism was the way of the future. In order to create a modernized lay Buddhism, Tanaka founded a series of lay organizations, the most enduring of which was the Kokuchukai (Nation’s Pillar Society). He referred to his movement as Nichirenshugi (Nichirenism). He was not just trying to reform the Nichiren Shu, he was trying to formulate a new way of doing Nichiren Buddhism that would go beyond all the previous sects. In many ways, Tanaka Chigaku and his Nichirenist lay Buddhist movement was an inspiration for later groups like the Reiyukai and Rissho Kosei Kai. Even within the Nichiren Shu, his reforms and advocacy of shakubuku still have strong adherents among the older members of the clergy.

I think it is far more honest to say that Japanese ministers, such as myself, are lay or householder bodhisattvas than to try to claim the title bhikshu, that properly only belongs to an itinerant mendicant or at the very least a celibate monastic. Yet, I have to wonder what happens to the whole concept of Sangha if there are no longer any genuine monastics who uphold the classical vinaya? On the other hand, the Buddha defined the jewel of the Sangha in a way that could indeed include householder practitioners. The Buddha used the term to signify those noble individuals who had actually attained some degree of insight and liberation by following the Buddha’s teachings.

These eight kinds of persons, O monks, are worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of reverential salutation, the unsurpassed field of merit for the world. What eight? The stream-enterer and one practising for the realization of stream-entry; the once-returner and one practising for the realization of the fruit of once-returning; the non-returner and one practising for the realization of non-returning; the arhat and one practising for arhatship. These eight kinds of persons are worthy of gifts, worthy of hospitality, worthy of offerings, worthy of reverential salutations, the unsurpassed field of merit for the world.

The four practising the way

And the four standing in the fruit:

This is the upright Sangha

Endowed with wisdom and virtue.

For people making offerings,

For creatures seeking to gain merit,

For those doing merit of the mundane kind,

What is given to the Sangha bears the greatest fruit.

(Nyanaponika, p. 223)

While this passage would seem to indicate that it is only the monastics that receive offerings that can attain these states, the sutras are full of stories about householders who also attain these fruits or who are on their way to acquiring them. The only exception being the fruit of arhatship, for there are no examples in the Pali Canon of a layperson becoming an arhat who does not either pass away or become a monastic within a day. So it would seem that this definition of the eight persons who are said to constitute the Arya Sangha or Noble Sangha could encompass the laity as well.

I also came across this startling (at least to me) story within the Pali Canon. It is the seventeenth story in the Vimanavatthu: Stories of the Mansions. In this story, monks on their alms rounds inspire the daughter of a brahman to inquire of a passing Buddhist layman about the Dharma. The layman turns out to have some insight into the Buddha’s teaching (he is at least a stream-enterer) and he not only confers upon the daughter the Threefold Refuge and the five precepts but he even teaches her how to practice mindfulness of the body and by following his instruction the daughter also becomes a stream-enterer.

The Blessed One was dwelling at Baranasi, in the deer park at Isipatana. In the morning the monks dressed, took bowl and robe and entered Baranasi. They went near the door of a certain brahman’s house. In that house the brahman’s daughter, Kesakari by name, who was taking lice from her mother’s head near the door of the house, saw the monks going along, and said to her mother, “Mother, these men who have renounced worldly life seem to me to be in their first youth, delicate, very handsome, worth looking at, not overcome by any calamity whatever. Now why is it that they renounce the world at this age?”

Her mother said to her, “Daughter, there is a son of the Sakyans; he has gone forth from the Sakyan clan and has appeared in the world as a teacher called the Buddha. He expounds Dhamma, lovely in the beginning, middle, and ending, with the meaning and the letter; he proclaims a Brahma-faring that is utterly complete and perfectly pure. Because these men have heard the Dhamma they have gone forth.”

Now at that time a certain lay-follower who had attained the fruit and had understood the Teaching, heard the conversation as he was going along that street and came up to the two women. Then the brahman lady said to him, “Here now, lay-follower, many men of good family renounce great wealth and a great circle of relatives and go forth in the Sakyan clan. Now from what motive do they go forth?” The lay-follower heard her and said, “Because of the danger in sense-pleasures and the advantage in renunciation,” and he spoke in detail of the motive to the best of his own understanding, explained the quality of the Three Jewels and expounded the advantage and benefit of the five precepts in relation to this world and to the world to come.

Then the brahman’s daughter asked him, “Is it possible for us too to partake in the advantage and benefit you have told about, through dependence upon the refuges and the precepts?” “Why not?” he said. “To be shared by all are these things which the Blessed One has spoken,” and he gave her the refuges and the precepts. When she had accepted the refuges and had undertaken to observe the precepts, she then said, “What is there further to be done beside this?” Observing her intelligence he thought to himself, “She must be one of those who has the qualifications,” and, explaining the nature of the body, he spoke of the object of meditation which are its thirty-two constituents; he aroused disgust in her for the body, and in addition, having moved her with a talk on Dhamma connected with impermanence and so forth, he pointed out the Way to insight and left her. She took to heart all he had said, and with her thoughts composed by the realization of the impurity of the body, she developed insight and before long won the fruit of stream-entry on account of her attainment of these qualifications. (Horner 1998, pp. 38-39)

So here we have not even begun to look at Mahayana teachings and we have the Buddha stating that the Noble Sangha is composed of those with some degree of realization, a qualification that can include those who are not monastics or mendicants; and furthermore we have an example of a layman with a degree of insight conferring the refuges and precepts and even meditation instruction upon a laywoman and the laywoman thereby gaining her own insight into the truth of the teachings. I would note that in the Buddha’s statement he is talking about those who receive alms, which would be the mendicants, and that in the story it is the sight of the mendicants on their rounds that initially inspires the daughter. Still this story suggests to me that even in the Pali Canon of Theravadin Buddhism we can find precedents for the lay bodhisattva that Tanaka Chigaku speaks of, the lay-followers who are a part of the Sangha by virtue of their insight and not superficial lifestyle, and who are able to propagate the Dharma and lead other lay-followers to insight as well by teaching the Dharma and the way to put it into practice in terms of faith (conferring the Threefold Refuge), ethical or mindful living (the five precepts), and contemplation leading to insight (mindfulness of the body in the story above). It would seem that a legitimate role for a lay-bodhisattva is to be a preacher of the Dharma and an exemplar and teacher of the Dharma for other laypeople. This is not a rejection of Buddhist monasticism (or mendicancy) but it shows that there is a legitimate role for lay teachers within the Sangha who practice and share the Dharma with others.

In the Vimalakirti Sutra the ideal of the lay bodhisattva comes into full flower. The sutra features a wealthy layman named Vimalakirti who practices the six perfections of the bodhisattva and is an exemplar and teacher of the Dharma among the ordinary citizens and householders of the city of Vaishali.

He wore the white clothes of the layman, yet lived impeccably like a religious devotee. He lived at home, but remained aloof from the realm of desire, the realm of pure matter, and the immaterial realm. He had a son, a wife, and female attendants, yet always maintained continence. He appeared to be surrounded by servants yet lived in solitude. He appeared to be adorned with ornaments, yet always was endowed with auspicious signs and marks. He seemed to eat and drink, yet always took nourishment from the taste of meditation. He made his appearance at the fields of sports and in the casinos, but his aim was always to mature those people who were attached to games and gambling. He visited the fashionable heterodox teachers, yet always kept unswerving loyalty to the Buddha. He understood the mundane and transcendental sciences and esoteric practices, yet always took pleasure in the delights of the Dharma. He mixed in all crowds, yet was respected as foremost of all. (Thurman, pp. 20-21)

In his footnote at the end of this passage, the translator, Robert Thurman, says, “Vimalakirti is here shown as the embodiment of the practice of reconciliation of dichotomies.” (Ibid, p. 114) He certainly seems to be embodying the reconciliation of the dichotomy between the monk and the householder. As the sutra progresses it shows Vimalakirti as almost on a par with the Buddha, while the arhats who are the Buddha’s monastic disciples are virtually a caricature of the narrow one-sided and chauvinistic Hinayana monks. Here we see the original Mahayana model for Shinran’s concept of a person who is “neither monk nor layman.”

The Lotus Sutra takes a different approach. In its early chapters it does not excoriate the arhats the way the Vimalakirti Sutra did, rather it presents the Buddha as prophesying that they will also attain buddhahood in the fullness of time because all of his teachings are actually One Vehicle that leads to buddhahood. The arhat ideal of world renunciation is thereby subsumed into the bodhisattva ideal of universal liberation. In chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra the ideal upholder and teacher of the gospel of the Lotus Sutra is presented. He or she is the “Teacher of the Dharma” (Skt. dharma-bhanaka). Keisho Tsukamoto traces the history of the term dharma-bhanaka in his book Source Elements of the Lotus Sutra. They were originally classed as a type of musician and were those who memorized and expounded the Mahayana sutras. They were also supposed to be monks. (Tsukamoto, pp. 179-180) Chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra, however, seems to include monks, nuns, laymen, and laywoman as capable of being the dharma-bhanakas of the Lotus Sutra.

The good men or women who keep, read, recite, expound and copy even a phrase of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, and offer flowers, incense, necklaces, incense powder, incense applicable to the skin, incense to burn, canopies, banners, streamers, garments and music to a copy of this sutra, or just join their hands together respectfully towards it, should be respected by all the people of the world. All the people of the world should make offerings to them as they do to me. Know this! These good men or women are great Bodhisattvas. They should be considered to have appeared in this world by their vow to expound the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma out of their compassion towards all living beings, although they had already attained Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi [in their previous existence]. Needless to say, those who keep all the passages of this sutra and make various offerings to this sutra [are great Bodhisattvas]. Medicine-King, know this! They should be considered to have given up the rewards of their pure karmas and appeared in the evil world after my extinction in order to expound this sutra out of their compassion towards all living beings. The good men or women who expound even a phrase of the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma to even one person even in secret after my extinction, know this, are my messengers. They are dispatched by me. They do my work. It is needless to say this of those who expound this sutra to many people in a great multitude. (Murano 1974, p. 172)

Medicine King! Although many laymen or monks will practice the Way of Bodhisattvas, they will not be able to practice it satisfactorily, know this, unless they see, hear, read, recite, copy, or keep this Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma or make offerings to it. If they hear this sutra, they will. Anyone who, while he is seeking the enlightenment of the Buddha, sees or hears this Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma, and after hearing it, understands it by faith and keeps it, know this, will approach Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. (Ibid, p. 176)

These passages take for granted that there will be monks and nuns, but the criteria it sets out for who can be considered a dharma-bhanaka, a teacher of the Dharma, cuts across the distinction between monastic and householder. The teacher of the Dharma is anyone, male or female, monastic or householder, who does the five practices of keeping, reading, reciting, expounding, and copying even a phrase of the Lotus Sutra.

It seems to me that there has always been a recognition, at least in the discourses of the Pali Canon and more explicitly in the Mahayana sutras, that lay men and women are capable of attaining some degree of insight and liberation, and may even confer the Three Refuges, the five precepts of lay practice, and even the techniques of meditative practice upon each other. These laypeople may even exhort the monastics to more diligent practice in addition to giving (or in some cases withholding) material support. So there certainly seems to be a canonical precedent for Tanaka Chigaku’s concept of a householder bodhisattva. Vimalakirti is certainly such a figure, and the “Teacher of the Dharma” chapter of the Lotus Sutra seems to be calling upon the laity to take up such a role in regard to the Lotus Sutra.

The way the Nichiren Shu speaks of the status and role of its ministers would seem to be in line with this kind of thinking. The clergy within Nichiren Shu are not held apart from the laity in terms of a difference in lifestyle or some presumed difference in social status or religious sanctity. Here is what the Shingyo Hikkei says:

Our faith does not differentiate ministers from lay followers. The minister’s base of activities is in a temple, church, or association, where they are responsible for personal and social dissemination of our faith, for studying the teachings of the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren Shonin, and for conducting Buddhist ceremonies. While living a secular life, lay members are responsible for working hard at their faith and training, and practicing the teachings. In this way we spread the true and wonderful aspects of the teachings. Only with unity and cooperation between ministers and lay members can we strengthen the faith in Nichiren Buddhism. (Hori 1978, p.1)

Articles 70 and 71 of Chapter 11 of the Nichiren Shu Constitution specify who is a member of the clergy (J. soryo) and what the duty of the clergy consists of:

Article 70. The person who receives an ordination certificate (J. docho) will be registered.

70.2 The person who is registered is a member of the clergy (J. soryo) and we divide them into three groups: 1.) Minister (J. kyoshi) 2.) Assistant Minister (J. kyoshi-ho) and 3.) Novice (J. shami).

70.3 The minister is a person who received the ministerial rank (J. sokai).

71. The clergy’s duty is to serve the Three Treasures, make efforts in the two ways of practice and study, always propagate to and assist the members (J. dan-to) and believers (J. shin-to), cooperate with each other, and always make efforts to raise the reputation of Nichiren Shu and the prosperity of the temple. (Translated by Rev. Chishin Hirai and Rev. Ryuei McCormick)

The Shingyo Dojo Reader furthermore says to the novices (J. shami) about to undertake the final phase of their training and become fully ordained ministers (J. kyoshi):

Next, a novice becoming a preacher means a promotion from being a student or disciple to be in the position of a teacher and a preacher. That is to say, you are now charged with the responsibility of teaching and guiding non-believers, educating them to become practitioners spreading the Odaimoku, and showing the people in the world how to attain Buddhahood and establish the Buddha land in this world. (Hori Reader, p. 10)

The Nichiren Shu does not envision its clergy as monastics, or at least it does not say this in its constitution and by-laws. Rather, the Nichiren Shu envisions its clergy as teachers of the Dharma who will take a leading role in the practice, study, and propagation of Buddhism, and particularly the Lotus Sutra and its Odaimoku.

As a Nichiren Shu minister with a full-time secular job and a family, I do not feel entitled to consider myself a bhikshu or a monastic. For that matter, I would not even presume to put myself on the same level as Vimalakirti. However, I certainly have striven to keep, read, receive, copy, and expound the Lotus Sutra, both its Odaimoku and even whole passages of it at a time. In a sense I feel I am doing that now. So by the criteria of the Lotus Sutra I can, perhaps, be justified in counting myself among the dharma-banaka, the teachers of the Dharma. This role, or even vocation, cuts across the dichotomy of monastic or lay, and also seems to transcend any particular socially recognized role.

I do find myself nodding in agreement with Bhikkhu Bodhi who said in a recent issue of Buddhadharma:

Whether one takes a Theravada perspective or a Mahayana perspective, the final goal of Buddhism involves the complete abandoning of all the defilements that keep us in bondage to samsara. A monastic person might not have advanced very far in actual inner renunciation, but the outer lifestyle of the monk is designed to facilitate that inner renunciation. Through the profession of their vows, the monastics adopt a life of celibacy, a life without possessing material resources or money. It’s a life that is in principle dedicated to the inner work of completely purifying the mind.

Even though laypeople living at home, practicing the dhamma on their own, can practice very diligently, the monastic form provides the ideal condition for the achievement of that inner state of complete renunciation. The monastic lifestyle represents in a manifest and visible form the achievement of the final goal, the achievement of that state of complete inner renunciation. Without the presence of a monastic sangha in the West, the final goal of the Buddha’s teachings will not be so visible. In that case, one can easily mistake the goals to be simply about living mindfully in the here and now, experiencing presence of mind in the present life, without seeing that there’s a transcendent goal toward which the Buddha’s teaching is pointing. (Amaro, p. 55)

That makes a lot of sense to me. I have felt that freedom myself during Shingyo Dojo and during more extended retreats I have done since that time, though I confess that monasticism is not a step that I am prepared to take now, if ever. It is not, so to speak, my calling. However, there is nothing in the Lotus Sutra, or Nichiren’s writings, or the current teachings of Nichiren Shu that would contradict what Bikkhu Bodhi stated. In fact, Nichiren himself, as I have shown, lived as a monastic all his life and even praised the monastic vocation. The Lotus Sutra has many passages that praise monasticism, and almost all of the bodhisattvas in the Lotus Sutra are monastics or take up monasticism. I definitely think that there needs to be a monastic component to the Sangha if Buddhism is to truly thrive into the 21st century.

At the same time, I do think that the householder-bodhisattva is also a legitimate member of the Sangha, and a very important one. It is the householder-bodhisattva in the form of ordained teachers of legitimate lineages who will keep those lineages and their teachings alive. It is they who will do as Vimalakirti did and keep the Buddha Dharma alive and propagate it among the people. By taking up the role of the teacher of the Dharma the householder-bodhisattva can sow the seeds of the Dharma and show others what it means to receive and keep, read, recite, copy, expound and most importantly live the Wonderful Dharma amid the causes and conditions of secular life, job, and family. Laymen (Skt. upasakas) and laywomen (Skt. upasikas) are, after all, also a vital and indispensable part of the four-fold Sangha. It may not, therefore, be such a terrible thing to have lineages of householder clergy who are specifically trained to minister the Dharma in a way that is most appropriate to the circumstances of laypeople. At the same time, when there is enough support for full time practice centers or even monasteries there is nothing (at least from the perspective of Nichiren Shu’s rules, bylaws, and long standing traditions) to prevent those clergy who wish to from taking up the life of full time monastic practitioners who can model a life of freedom and just as importantly run practice centers and facilitate retreats for those householders (whether lay or ordained) who wish to partake to a limited extent of the life of total freedom from secular entanglements that monastic life represents.

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